vili INTRODUCTION

castorius lacked a mouth, so Apollo' with his own hands took
pains to make one. From that source draw inspiration, and, a
great doctor and a great poet, all that you achieve will be filled
with that mighty god'. Throughout his life he had a habit of
biting his upper lip when engaged on a problem, and some of his
biographers ascribe this to the effect of the operation.  He illus—
trates the classical legend that Apollo saves from lightning the
heads of poets, for, as an infant in his mother'!s arms, he escaped
all injury when she was killed by lightning.  'This incident was
held to be an omen of his future glory.  In childhood his health
was not robust, and he lived chiefly at his father!s villa at In—
eaffi, which he calls Caff, or in Latin Caphii, fifteen miles from
Verona, and was educated by his father.

Education at Padua

Verona has no university, and like other Veronese youths,
then as now, he went in his teens to the neighboring University
of Padua, which city had been annexed, with Verona, by the
Venetians. Padua was the University town, or, as Renan says,
the Latin Quarter, of Venice, and at Venice were published the
books that were written at Padua and Bologna. As a student,
Fracastorius must have met many men from all parts of Europe
who were later to become famous, such as Copernicus,? and per—
haps Erasmus, who studied in the Universities of North Italy,
1506—1509. His father!s friend Girolamo della Torre (Turria—
nus), who died in 1505, was Professor of Medicine, and the latter's
son, Marcantonio della Torre, was lecturing on anatomy. 'The
influence of this gifted family of the old nobility of Verona is
evident throughout the career of Fracastorius.s He devoted

: Apollo, as the patron god of medicine and poetry, was the favor—
ite divinity of Fracastorius, plays a prominent part in the myths
inha.t occur in all his longer poems, and is often invoked in the shorter

yrics.

2 Copernicus (1473—1543) was a student at Padua in 1501, and his
influence may be traced in the Homocenfrica of Fracastorius, of
which some say that it *paved the way' for the great work of Coper—
nicus.

s Girolamo della Torre had three sons, 1) Marcantonio, the fa—
mous anatomist, for &a time Professor of Anatomy at Pavia; he died
prematurely, of lenticular fever (petechial typhus), at Riva in 1506.
Hence he never wrote his projected work on anatomy, for which
Leonardo da Vinci was to have furnished drawings. See F. H.